Mine host: John Fothergill

FIFTY years after his first TV appearance, Basil Fawlty seems to be riding high on Shaftesbury Avenue in the stage version of Fawlty Towers at the Apollo Theatre. Famously, John Cleese and Connie Booth based the character on a hotelier called Donald Sinclair whom they met while staying in Torquay in 1971.

Sinclair regarded his guests with open loathing, criticising their appearance and table manners, and on one occasion hurling fellow Python Eric Idle’s suitcase over a wall under the delusion that it contained a bomb.

However, it seems improbable that the ghost of another legendary proprietor did not filter through the invention of this marvellous comedy.

In 1898, a young architect and friend of Oscar Wilde called John Fothergill (1876-1957) opened the Carfax Gallery in Ryder Street in St James. It did not prosper under his guidance. As he admitted: “We are just about keeping our heads below water.”

Having married and in need of an income, Fothergill decided to run a pub and searched England looking for something suitable. He rejected one tavern called The Jolly Gardener on the grounds that: “Who ever knew or even heard of a gardener that was jolly?”

He finally bought The Spread Eagle Inn at Thame, Oxfordshire, and proceeded to rule the establishment by his own extremely individual code, insisting that only the finest food and drink be offered in the best furnished and decorated surroundings, and refusing to serve “under-bred folk or inferior females”.

Over the years the formerly mild-mannered youth had turned into a formidably cantankerous middle-aged man. One acquaintance commented: “John Fothergill is the worst-mannered man in London, but when you get to know him well – he’s far worse”.

He utterly refused to accept that his role of innkeeper implied that he was a servant of the public in any way, telling one customer: “My name is Fothergill. But ‘sir’ would be shorter.”

To rub home his insistence on gentility he had the words “Manners Makyth Man” carved on to the back of the dining room chairs and to discourage the ill-educated the menu consisted of erudite crossword clues. This latter innovation had to be abandoned due to the resulting chaos.

Fothergill basically charged what he felt was appropriate. He overcharged one group because he considered them to be physically ugly: “the first time in history seven people without knowing it have left an inn having paid an extra sixpence each for not being beautiful”.

When one old lady insisted on inspecting his bedrooms before staying at the Spread Eagle, a fuming Fothergill sent his wife upstairs to accompany the woman, shouting after them: “Oh, and, Kate, don’t show her the room with the vermin!”

One thing that was guaranteed to rouse Fothergill’s ire was the practice of non-customers using his toilet facilities. This would draw a torrent of abuse on the head of an offender. Even bona fide guests were not immune. When one guest complained about the state of the lavatory Fothergill told him that, if he ever returned, he should bring his own lavatory with him.

After he had received some Greek honey sent specially from Athens, he proudly offered it to his guests at teatime. One couple politely refused the honey, whereupon Fothergill turned to the rest of the company and snarled: “Aren’t they bastards?!”

Sex was another red rag that could be relied on to enrage the Fothergill bull. He proclaimed: “The age around 20 is the young man’s only chance of being chaste in his life and he ought to take it. After all, sex doesn’t occupy a man later more than a few minutes a week so why should there be such a fuss about it?”

The sight of a girl sitting on a student’s knee in his bar roused him to fever pitch. “I attacked them like a fury, telling them to go out, never to come again, and to tell their friends not to.”

When a couple asked for a double room, Fothergill insisted that they had single rooms “because you’re not married, and I discourage indiscriminate coupling here”.

In one case Fothergill’s morality campaign received a rebuff. Having spotted a man entering a woman’s room, Fothergill rebuked him: “I specifically asked you not to enter ladies’ rooms?” It turned out that the lady was the man’s wife.

Fothergill was far more at home with the people he regarded as the “right sort”. He admired the country gentry and treasured a copy of a book written by an elderly neighbour entitled Our Dumb Friends – How to Kill, Skin, and Stuff Them.

On one occasion Fothergill actually made an attempt to soften his image.

He had been impressed by hearing of a tobacconist who after a 15-year gap had still remembered which cigars a client preferred. Fothergill decided to try to emulate this feat of service. He approached a guest and with an encouraging smile said: “You’ve been here before, haven’t you?”

The man nodded. Fothergill crinkled his brow then came up with: “Now, let me think. It must have been about two years ago, wasn’t it?”

“No,” replied the guest. “It was at tea-time”.

• Adapted from Neil Titley’s book The Oscar Wilde World of Gossip. www.wildetheatre.co.uk – available at Daunts, South End Green